Re: Installing themes from art.gnome.org via gnome-theme-manager

[Alex Combas <ghetto_samurai shaw ca>]

On Tue, 2003-06-24 at 10:59, Thomas Wood wrote:
> In the efforts to make GNOME theming easier, especially in regards to
> those from art.gnome.org so as to make a.g.o the definitive source of
> GNOME themes, 

No offence but it doesnt exactly seem definitive, is it suppost to be?
If so, then why dont I see any of the themes from gnome-themes-extra?

> we have decided it would be to our advantage to
> incorporate better installation of themes so as to be able to
integrate
> easy install of themes directly from a.g.o. Currently, installing
themes
> from art.gnome.org is a two step (or more) process that requires first
> downloading the theme, then installing it, then switching to that
theme
> and as a result of bugs in system tar, or in the theme manager itself,
> even this is not a hiccup free process. To overcome this, at least in
> part , a lot of modern programs (such as winamp, mozilla and others)
> allow the user to download, install and even switch to themes from a
> website in a single step process by a common extension which the
program
> is associated with. I propose we make it easier for people to install
> themes by doing this to GNOME themes, by changing the usual .tar.gz
> extension to a special extension and having the theme manager
associated
> with these files so that it can "open" and install them. I believe
this
> would be the simplest solution. 

iirc some distrobutions like to put directorys in strange places, would
you simply go with the LSB? And what about uninstalling the theme? What
about theme-engines? 

I noticed (perhaps wrongly) that a.g.o leaves the theme-engine up to the
user to install, while I dont really see any way around that I think its
still a weakness because what if the users system doenst have that
particular engine installed or what if they dont even realize that they
need a particular engine for the theme to work.

I also think (perhaps wrongly) that we should stop distrobuting themes
for the desktop in seperate chunks as a.g.o does, by that I mean we
should only distrobute gnome meta-themes. Its really frustrating for a
user to look at a pretty screen shot and then download a theme only to
find that about 1/5th of the desktop is affected (ie NO icons, NO gtk-1
theme, NO wm-theme, NO xmms theme, etc etc.) 

If we start distrobuting metathemes like gnome-themes-extra has done so
wonderfully then at least users get what they think they are getting. 

They are still be able to mix and match different parts of the
metathemes so they will still have all the customizations they want, and
we end up with a much more professional looking product.

Personally I like to use the Gorilla metatheme for my window borders and
controls, but Industrial for my icons and xmms. 

> 
> ps. Please throw insults at ajgenius as to the lengthy-ness of some
sentances in this proposal, as they where his idea.

Well looks like I would be a hypocrit if I threw the first stone ;0

~Alex